System and method for serving multiple data objects and formatting functions in a single request

Abstract

Disclosed is a novel framework by which the sources of data objects and / or formatting functions can be easily requested and managed. More specifically, the invention provides a system for and method of serving multiple data objects and / or formatting functions to a subscribing client via a single request. The system comprises a catalog with entries referencing components used to generate data objects and formatting functions, each of which has a unique identifier; and an engine for receiving requests from the subscribing client, wherein each request includes one or more catalog identifiers. This engine, for each identifier in each received request, executes any prerequisite components, sets the appropriate parameters, and executes the component referenced by said component identifier to obtain the requested data object or formatting function. Having executed each said component, said engine protects the namespaces of the returned functions and variables and aggregates said data objects and / or formatting functions into a script library, and returns said script library to said subscribing client.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]This invention generally relates to Web pages, and more specifically, the invention relates to providing or adding sections of content to Web pages. Even more specifically, the preferred embodiment of the invention relates to systems and methods for serving multiple data objects and formatting functions in a single request.[0003]2. Background Art[0004]The use of a client side scripting language library, such as a JavaScript library, that provides dynamically generated content is a relatively new approach to embedding one or more sections of content on a web page. This approach has many advantages. Because it requires no server-to-server integration between the server hosting the web page and the server hosting the JavaScript library, a web page developer simply embeds a URL to one or more JavaScript libraries (possibly along with a few line of JavaScript code) and the dynamic content provided by the JavaScript library i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019]Another object of the present invention is to provide a framework by which the sources of data objects and / or formatting functions provided by a server can be easily requested and managed.

[0022]These and other objectives are attained with a novel framework by which the sources of data objects and / or formatting functions can be easily requested and managed. More specifically, the invention provides a system for and method of serving data objects and / or formatting functions to a subscribing client. The system comprises a catalog referencing components that are used for 1) generating data objects, 2) generating formatting functions, or 3) generating ‘prerequisite’ code that is required by one or more data object and / or formatting function; each of said components having at least one of a plurality of component identifiers; and an engine for receiving requests from the subscribing client, wherein each request includes 1) one or more of the data object and / or formatting function component identifiers, 2) zero or more parameters to be passed to this component, and 3) a ‘subscription id’ used to identify this data object or formatting function in the aggregated response.

[0030]The preferred embodiment of the invention, described below in detail, provides a number of important advantages. It allows a subscribing client (or a local application) to request multiple data objects and / or formatting functions via a single request, improving performance for pages that need to request multiple data objects and / or formatting functions from a single server. It provides a catalog data store to manage the id, description, location, prerequisite component ids, parameter names, parameter default values, and other attributes associated with a data object components, formatting function components, and prerequisite code components. It provides a catalog cache for easy programmatic access to this information by the engine. It provides a catalog user interface for easy access to this information by interested users, such as web page developers. It allows a page to request each data object or formatting function via a unique identifier, eliminating the need for the subscribing client to request and maintain the exact location of each component. It allows each request to pass parameters associated with each requested data object and / or formatting function. It automatically includes any prerequisite code required for the requested data objects and / or formatting functions. It automatically sets default values for any parameters needed by a data object component or formatting function component that were not provided in the request. It automatically executes the appropriate data object and / or formatting function components. It automatically protects the namespace of the variables and functions created by each data object or formatting function component. It automatically aggregates the output for each requested data object and formatting function into a single response.

Problems solved by technology

A disadvantage of this approach is that if the formatting of the content provided by the JavaScript library does not provide the formatting desired for the including page, then a new JavaScript library must be created to provide content with the desired format.

As more variations of these dynamically generated JavaScript libraries are created for various content formats, updates across all variations can become difficult to maintain.

A key disadvantage of the above-discussed approaches is that when a page needs to embed many different sections of dynamically generated content, this page must submit a separate request to obtain each data object and formatting function needed on the page.

This can result in several requests to the server(s) hosting the data objects and formatting functions.

Another disadvantage is that the URI to each data object and formatting function must be specified by every page wishing to include this content.

The problem with the first approach is that updates to the content or functionality of supporting content require manual changes to each page.

This quickly becomes a time-consuming, error-prone process if this approach is used for more than a few hundred pages.

Also, custom content based on user attributes is not possible with this approach.

The second approach resolves the data management issues introduced by the first approach, however, it too has fundamental limitations.

A key disadvantage of limitation (A) is that the supporting content application code must be deployed onto every application server wishing to use this supporting content.

This introduces additional resource and performance demands on this application server.

None of these alternatives is desirable.

This introduces a potentially significant performance hit and / or additional complexity and resource demands (such as an advanced caching strategy), especially for personalized, context sensitive, or language-specific supporting content.

Approaches (A) and (B) also typically have a development and testing cost associated with integrating the primary page content with the supporting content API.

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